SARAH VINE: We Brits don't do revolutions but this election will be as close to one as we'll get. And the Tories are the aristocratic ruling class totally unprepared for what's about to engulf them...

• e-mail

When Boris Johnson came out in support of Brexit back in 2016, it had the effect of turbo-charging the Leave campaign.

It went from being a marginal group run by a bunch of slightly cranky Eurosceptic geeks (chief among them Dominic Cummings) to a powerful political force, led by a charismatic, if controversial, figure.

David Cameron’s inability (or unwillingness) to spot the game-change or take the challenge seriously was what, ultimately, led to his downfall.

And now the same thing is about to happen to another Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.

Nigel Farage’s ‘Boris’ moment this week, in which he took over from Richard Tice as Leader of Reform UK and announced his intention to stand as the MP for Clacton, is likely to radically alter the course of this election.

Like Boris, he had initially dithered over whether to throw his hat in the ring, but changed his mind (after a trip to the pub, of course), saying that he had a ‘terrible sense of guilt’ for not putting himself forward and urging the good people of Clacton to ‘send me to Parliament to be a bloody nuisance’.

Afterwards, a woman in a tracksuit called Victoria tipped a milkshake over him. A nice bit of theatre there that will have only delighted his supporters. And Farage certainly knows how to play the political stage.

There is something about his straight-talking, cheeky chappie, Del Boy persona that just cuts clean through all the art and artifice of Westminster politics.

Listen to Sarah Vine on the latest episode of The Reaction  

Nigel Farage was greeted by crowds of admirers and supporters as he launched his bid to become MP for Clacton in the Essex seaside town today... 

... including this woman who got very up-close-and-personal with him

And in a world where the voting public is heartily sick of a preening political class that seems more preoccupied with its own internal struggles than getting stuff done, that’s electoral catnip.

If Rishi Sunak is a fasting vegan teetotal smoking ban of a politician, Farage is a meat-and-two-veg, extra hot English mustard, pint-of-Chablis-and-a-packet-of-fags force of nature.

I’ve shared one or two TV studios with him over the years, and his presence fills a room like the smell of testosterone on match day. If he were an aftershave, he’d be Old Spice, if he were an animal, he’d be a Jack Russell terrier, if he were a car he’d be a 1996 Ford Cosworth with tobacco-yellowed seats.

Love him or loathe him, he refreshes the parts of the voting public that other politicians – not just Sunak, with his wholesome head-boy vibe, but also Keir ‘what is a woman?’ Starmer and Ed ‘pratfalls’ Davey – just can’t reach.

And if the Conservatives had half an ounce of political self-awareness, they would have been working hard behind the scenes for the last few years, moving heaven and earth to get him if not exactly inside the tent (he’s a hard dog to keep on any political porch aside from his own) then at least on the same side of the pitch.

Instead, they’ve dismissed him in rather the same patronising way the American Left has dismissed Donald Trump over the years.

When Hillary Clinton called him and his supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’ back in the 2016 American election, she thought she would shame voters into abandoning him. Instead, her words had the opposite effect, creating a sense of resentment towards an entitled political elite that only entrenched Trump’s core support.

The Conservative leadership’s long-standing disdain for Farage has had a similar effect. He is often compared to Trump, and with good reason. The pair are friends (insofar as anyone is ever friends in this business), and both are outspoken political shock-jocks who love to say the unsayable.

Their political capital is derived from their ability to subvert and undermine the moderate mainstream, and to act as magnets for the politically dispossessed whose numbers have been growing steadily over the past decade.

These are the voters traditional parties have been losing – the Conservatives especially, but also Labour – through their refusal to identify and engage with some of the more uncomfortable issues Britain faces, in particular soaring immigration and the cultural and socio-economic consequences thereof.

While the rest tie themselves up in knots, Farage is not afraid to offend. He keeps his message simple and to the point, and he won’t be knocked off course. And it’s working, particularly among disillusioned Conservatives.

Nigel Farage was drenched in milkshake thrown by a woman while out on the campaign trail in Clacton, Essex, today

The Reform UK leader wiped himself down... 

... before later making light of the milkshake incident

According to the latest YouGov polls, 21 per cent of those who handed Boris Johnson a stonking Tory majority in 2019 now say they will be voting Reform. And that was BEFORE Farage made his big move.

The Conservatives are not just in trouble (yesterday another poll predicted that Labour was on course for its biggest win in history, with the Conservatives winning just 140 seats), they are fighting for their very political survival.

It’s increasingly looking as though they won’t so much be getting a bloody nose on July 4, as eating hospital food for quite some time.

Farage’s intervention is key to this. If he had stayed out of the fight, many Right-leaning voters might have swallowed hard and voted Conservative for want of an alternative.

But with Farage in play, all that changes. Conservative voters who believe that the party in its current form no longer represents their interests will put their faith in him.

Meanwhile, Left-leaning Tories will pivot towards the Liberal Democrats, especially in so-called ‘blue wall’ seats, in the mistaken belief that they are not quite as lefty as Labour.

And so, the Right and the Left of the party will split the Conservative vote, effectively gobbling itself up in the process – and, ironically, delivering an even bigger victory to Starmer.

A few months ago, I wrote in the pages of this newspaper that the Conservatives could find a cure for cancer, and they still wouldn’t win the next election. I’m afraid nothing has changed.

Voters are tired, not just of them, but of traditional politics, which many just don’t see as working. They want change, as much as for change’s sake as anything else.

The Brits don’t really do revolutions, but I reckon this election will be as close to one as we’ll ever get. And the Conservative party finds itself in the unfortunate role of the aristocratic ruling class, utterly unprepared for what’s about to engulf them.

For what it’s worth, I believe the rot really set in during the pandemic. Nothing to do with Partygate – that was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. No, it was the fact that the measures brought about by Covid compromised an important core value of British conservatism: freedom of the individual.

That, for me at least, has always been the clear dividing line between Labour and Conservatives: the former believe in the state, the latter in the individual.

Boris understood this, which was why he pushed back so hard against lockdown in the early days of the pandemic. But eventually he lost that battle, and then the machine of state stepped in. Everything became about supporting that machine, from propping up the NHS to funding furlough to snitching on friends and neighbours.

Individual freedoms were curbed with an almost sinister delight. Small businesses went to the wall, the self-employed suffered. Anyone who objected or dissented was treated with contempt. All deviation from the norm was frowned upon. In other words, socialism.

If you’re going to end up living in a socialist country, you might as well leave it up to the experts to run it. Might as well have the real thing. Which, come July 4, we will.

If the Conservative party is to rebuild after this, it needs a complete cultural re-set, a new leader who can set out, clearly and unapologetically, what its core values are, and then defend them as staunchly and as tirelessly as Farage defends his.

It will not be a straightforward task, but in some ways the predicted Conservative carnage may actually make it easier.

Internal Tory division has been a major contributor to the party’s failings in recent years, and to its loss of standing in the eyes of the public. With many of those responsible either standing down or due to lose their seats, enforcing strict discipline within the ranks for a new leader ought, in theory, to be achievable.

Question is: who will have the stomach for the fight?

NOW LISTEN TO THE REACTION

Sarah Vine and Andrew Pierce bring their own no-holds-barred opinions, insights and reaction (clue is in the title) to the biggest stories of the week. New episodes every Wednesday. 

• LISTEN to The Reaction wherever you get your podcasts 
• WATCH The Reaction on YouTube 

The Reaction with Sarah Vine & Andrew Pierce, now available as a podcast or on YouTube